In the Name of Rome: The Men Who Won the Roman Empire

Adrian Goldsworthy has received wide acclaim for his exceptional writing on the Roman Empire - including high praise from the acclaimed military historian and author John Keegan - and here he offers a new perspective on the empire by focusing on its greatest generals, including Scipio Africanus, Marius, Pompey, Caesar, and Titus.

Hannibal: A History of the Art of War among the Carthaginians and Romans Down to the Battle of Pydna, 168 BC, with a Detailed Account of the Second Punic War

Hannibal is often considered the finest general the world has ever known. Setting out from Carthaginian-dominated Spain with a small army of select troops, he fought his way over the Pyrenees and crossed the Alps with elephants and a full baggage train. Descending into Italy, he destroyed the main Roman army at Lake Trasimeno and came close to conquering Rome itself.

Carthage Must Be Destroyed: The Rise and Fall of an Ancient Civilization

An epic history of a doomed civilization and a lost empire. The devastating struggle to the death between the Carthaginians and the Romans was one of the defining dramas of the ancient world. In an epic series of land and sea battles, both sides came close to victory before the Carthaginians finally succumbed and their capital city, history, and culture were almost utterly erased.

Augustus: First Emperor of Rome

Caesar Augustus's story, one of the most riveting in western history, is filled with drama and contradiction, risky gambles and unexpected success. He began as a teenage warlord, whose only claim to power was as the heir of the murdered Julius Caesar. Mark Antony dubbed him "a boy who owes everything to a name," but in the years to come the youth outmaneuvered all the older and more experienced politicians and was the last man standing in 30 BC.

The Crusades: The Authoritative History of the War for the Holy Land

The Crusades is an authoritative, accessible single-volume history of the brutal struggle for the Holy Land in the Middle Ages. Thomas Asbridge - a renowned historian who writes with "maximum vividness" (Joan Acocella, The New Yorker) - covers the years 1095 to 1291 in this big, ambitious, listenable account of one of the most fascinating periods in history.

Rubicon: The Triumph and Tragedy of the Roman Republic

The Roman Republic was the most remarkable state in history. What began as a small community of peasants camped among marshes and hills ended up ruling the known world. Rubicon paints a vivid portrait of the Republic at the climax of its greatness - the same greatness which would herald the catastrophe of its fall. It is a story of incomparable drama.

William Tecumseh Sherman: In the Service of My Country: A Life

General Sherman's 1864 burning of Atlanta solidified his legacy as a ruthless leader. Yet Sherman proved far more complex than his legendary military tactics reveal. James Lee McDonough offers fresh insight into a man tormented by the fear that history would pass him by, who was plagued by personal debts, and who lived much of his life separated from his family.

Persian Fire: The First World Empire and the Battle for the West

In the fifth century BC, a global superpower was determined to bring truth and order to what it regarded as two terrorist states. The superpower was Persia, incomparably rich in ambition, gold, and men. The terrorist states were Athens and Sparta, eccentric cities in a poor and mountainous backwater: Greece. The story of how their citizens took on the Great King of Persia, and thereby saved not only themselves, but Western civilization as well, is as heart-stopping and fateful as any episode in history.

Dynasty: The Rise and Fall of the House of Caesar

Author and historian Tom Holland returns to his roots in Roman history and the audience he cultivated with Rubicon - his masterful, witty, brilliantly researched popular history of the fall of the Roman republic - with Dynasty, a luridly fascinating history of the reign of the first five Roman emperors.

Caesar: Life of a Colossus

Tracing the extraordinary trajectory of Julius Caesar's life, Adrian Goldsworthy covers not only the great Roman emperor's accomplishments as charismatic orator, conquering general, and powerful dictator but also lesser-known chapters. Ultimately, Goldsworthy realizes the full complexity of Caesar's character and shows why his political and military leadership continues to resonate some 2,000 years later.

Pax Romana: War, Peace, and Conquest in the Roman World

Pax Romana examines how the Romans came to control so much of the world and asks whether traditionally favorable images of the Roman peace are true. Goldsworthy vividly recounts the rebellions of the conquered and examines why they broke out, why most failed, and how they became exceedingly rare. He reveals that hostility was just one reaction to the arrival of Rome and that from the outset, conquered peoples collaborated, formed alliances, and joined invaders, causing resistance movements to fade away.

A Great and Terrible King: Edward I and the Forging of Britain

Edward I is familiar to millions as "Longshanks", conqueror of Scotland and nemesis of Sir William Wallace (in Braveheart). Yet this story forms only the final chapter of the king's action-packed life. Earlier, Edward had defeated and killed the famous Simon de Montfort, traveled to the Holy Land, and conquered Wales. He raised the greatest armies of the Middle Ages and summoned the largest parliaments. Notoriously, he expelled all the Jews from his kingdom.

Spain in Our Hearts: Americans in the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939

For three crucial years in the 1930s, the Spanish Civil War dominated headlines in America and around the world as volunteers flooded to Spain to help its democratic government fight off a fascist uprising led by Francisco Franco and aided by Hitler and Mussolini. Today we're accustomed to remembering the war through Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls and Robert Capa's photographs. But Adam Hochschild has discovered some less familiar yet far more compelling characters who reveal the full tragedy and importance of the war.

SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome

In SPQR, world-renowned classicist Mary Beard narrates the unprecedented rise of a civilization that even 2,000 years later still shapes many of our most fundamental assumptions about power, citizenship, responsibility, political violence, empire, luxury, and beauty.

Cicero: The Life and Times of Rome's Greatest Politician

In this dynamic and engaging biography, Anthony Everitt plunges us into the fascinating, scandal-ridden world of ancient Rome in its most glorious heyday. Accessible to us through his legendary speeches but also through an unrivaled collection of unguarded letters to his close friend Atticus, Cicero comes to life here as a witty and cunning political operator.

Masters of Command: Alexander, Hannibal, Caesar, and the Genius of Leadership

Alexander, Hannibal, Caesar: Each was a master of war. Each had to look beyond the battlefield to decide whom to fight and why; to know what victory was and when to end the war; to determine how to bring stability to the lands he conquered. Alexander, Hannibal, and Caesar had to be not only generals but statesmen. And yet each was a battlefield commander, a strategist, a leader of men - in short, a warrior.

Caesar's Legion: The Epic Saga of Julius Caesar's Elite Tenth Legion and the Armies of Rome

Stephen Dando-Collins paints a vivid and definitive portrait of daily life in the Tenth Legion as he follows Caesar and his men along the blood-soaked fringes of the Empire. This unprecedented regimental history reveals countless previously unknown details about Roman military practices, Caesar's conduct as a commander and his relationships with officers and legionnaires, and the daily routine and discipline of the Legion.

The German War: A Nation Under Arms, 1939-1945; Citizens and Soldiers

As early as 1941, Allied victory in World War II seemed all but assured. How and why, then, did the Germans prolong the barbaric conflict for three and a half more years? In The German War, acclaimed historian Nicholas Stargardt draws on an extraordinary range of primary source materials - personal diaries, court records, and military correspondence - to answer this question. He offers an unprecedented portrait of wartime Germany, bringing the hopes and expectations of the German people to vivid life.

The Man Who Knew: The Life and Times of Alan Greenspan

Sebastian Mallaby's magisterial biography of Alan Greenspan, the product of over five years of research based on untrammeled access to his subject and his closest professional and personal intimates, brings into vivid focus the mysterious point where the government and the economy meet. To understand Greenspan's story is to see the economic and political landscape of the last 30 years - and the presidency, from Reagan to George W. Bush - in a whole new light.

By the Spear: Philip II, Alexander the Great, and the Rise and Fall of the Macedonian Empire

For the first time, By the Spear offers an exhilarating military narrative of the reigns of these two larger-than-life figures in one volume. Ian Worthington gives full breadth to the careers of father and son, showing how Philip was the architect of the Macedonian empire, which reached its zenith under Alexander, only to disintegrate upon his death.

Napoleon: A Life

Andrew Roberts' Napoleon is the first one-volume biography to take advantage of the recent publication of Napoleon's thirty-three thousand letters, which radically transform our understanding of his character and motivation. At last we see him as he was: protean multitasker, decisive, surprisingly willing to forgive his enemies and his errant wife Josephine.

Genghis Khan and the Quest for God: How the World's Greatest Conqueror Gave Us Religious Freedom

Throughout history the world's greatest conquerors have made their mark not just on the battlefield but in the societies they have transformed. Genghis Khan conquered by arms and bravery, but he ruled by commerce and religion. He created the world's greatest trading network and drastically lowered taxes for merchants, but he knew that if his empire was going to last, he would need something stronger and more binding than trade. He needed religion.

The Sea Wolves: A History of the Vikings

In AD 793 Norse warriors struck the English isle of Lindisfarne and laid waste to it. Wave after wave of Norse "sea wolves" followed in search of plunder, land, or a glorious death in battle. Much of the British Isles fell before their swords, and the continental capitals of Paris and Aachen were sacked in turn. Turning east, they swept down the uncharted rivers of central Europe, captured Kiev, and clashed with mighty Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine Empire.

To Hell and Back: Europe 1914-1949

The European catastrophe, the long continuous period from 1914 to1949, was unprecedented in human history - an extraordinarily dramatic, often traumatic, and endlessly fascinating period of upheaval and transformation.

Publisher's Summary

Hannibal's battle plan at Cannae became the mother of all great battle strategies - the first battle of encirclement that has been imitated (often to disastrous effect) endlessly over the past two thousand years. In this brilliant, long-overdue, and beautifully written account, Robert L. O'Connell gives listeners an epic account of one of the most dramatic battles of antiquity.

The Ghosts of Cannae is at once a book about a specific battle (the massive defeat of a huge but inexperienced Roman army in southern Italy by Hannibal in 216 BC) and also an interpretation of the larger course of the Second Punic War, as well as an assessment of the historical impact of Rome's storied rivalry with Carthage. What ties the book together is the fate of the survivors, their treatment by the authorities in Rome, and ultimately their vindication nearly two decades later, when they defeated Hannibal at the decisive battle of Zama in North Africa. With an unforgettable cast of heroes and villains, The Ghosts of Cannae is history at its finest.

Many books that center on a specific event such as a battle tend to lack a global perspective. Robert O'Connell with Ghosts not only delivers all the blood and guts a body could hope for, not to mention a heavy dose of strategy and tactics, he neatly integrates this story into the greater story of man. He does what historians are supposed to do. He teaches lessons that shouldn't be learned the hard way. Ever since that hot day in August 216 BC, generals in every generation have been looking for their own holy grail; their own Cannae. Some were close, but no cigar. Rome's solution to the Hannibal problem would turn out to be their undoing. The days of the amateur generals were gone, and the professional armies turned power brokers were here to stay.

This is one of the best history audiobooks I've encountered. Rather than a meta-level analysis of the events, the author focuses on the narrative of what happened during the second punic war. In other words, the narrative is really the star here, which is fantastic because the events of the second punic war are so intriguing, so full of twists and turns and larger than life figures, that they easily carry the show.

An impressive book for fans of ancient roman history. The story covers the early wars between ancient Rome, through the defeat of Carthage by Scipio Africanus (the subsequent destruction of Carthage and exile and death of Hannibal is considered only briefly). As the title implies the fate of "the Ghosts of Cannae" - the Roman survivors of the battle- is well outlined. Overall the history is very well told. The principal criticism is one common to many military audiobooks - following the movements of battles without diagrams is next to impossible. The book also offers a plausible answer to a puzzling question: once the Romans at Cannae were surrounded and had no choice but fight to the death, why did they not kill a comparable number of Carthaginians?

First off, the narrator is amazing. Especially for the subject matter of this book. Secondly, I enjoyed that the beginning of this book details a brief history of how man first started to hunt and gather and form tribes. I thought it was a good book and the only detractors were when the author paused to argue that some people believe differently than the view he was expressing. I understand this for the scholary who he probably felt would test his work, but for the layman reader I just wanted to hear the account straight-up, with no intrusion. Still a good book. Very detailed.

What made the experience of listening to The Ghosts of Cannae the most enjoyable?

Brings to life the battle itself, but also the people and motivations that led up to it and the aftermath of the disaster, with the 'ghosts' as a theme. Very fine narration, and much more than a military history, but still very attentive to the details of the battles themselves. Completely engrossing for me, and unforgettable!

I'm already a fan of this time in history, but the atmosphere, the events and ramifications were conveyed in logical, gripping way. Lots about roman history can be hard to hold in one's head when not reading the names and places in print, but that is not the case here. The story unfolds clearly....and what a story! The fate of the Western World was altered forever during the Second Punic, and the author makes a good case that it was in fact one battle in particular that created the conditions necessary for Julius Caesar, The fall of the Republic, the rise of the Roman Empire and the building blocks of the Western Civilization. All because Hannibal was a badass. Like I said, this time of history is fascinating to me, even if I find Greek culture more rewarding.

What about Alan Sklar’s performance did you like?

It was bloody, violent time and Alan Sklar's voice captures it perfectly. He sounds like a ruined statue and it's perfect.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

I didn't listen to it in one sitting, but found it was broken up in such a way that taking a break for a day or two didn't effect my ability to pick the story back up.

Any additional comments?

Do you have any interest in Roman culture? Mediterranean history? This one is a no-brainer.

This is really a great book and I enjoyed every minute of it. The analysis of the battle of Trasimene and Cannae were outstanding. There was a clear presentation of the battle tactics which ultimately enabled Rome to survive the devasting losses to Hannibal. The rehabilitation of the "Ghosts of Cannae" was an interesting aspect of the battle I was unfamiliar with. Everyone interested in military history and Ancient history should read this book. It will help if you have some knowledge of the geography of the Ancient world or have a historical atlas handy.

The subject is indeed sweeping and the focus on the defeated troops from Cannae is interesting but the writing is not worthy of the subject. The author mistakes slanginess for liveliness whereas in fact it grates on the ear.The book also fails to give any real sense of the characters he is writing about, even Hannibal. Granted this can be difficult when working with ancient sources but it is certainly not impossible. The ancient authors do a better job than he does. In general this is a disappointing book and it should't have been. Also, the narration is pompous and obtrusive.